CU Buffs, Embree set to sign larger than expected class Wednesday

New Colorado football coach makes inroads on recruiting trail

Colorado football coach Jon Embree and Ralphie will welcome a new class of players to the Buff family Wednesday.

The first group of Pac-12 Buffs will be introduced this afternoon when Colorado football coach Jon Embree steps to the microphone on national signing day at the Dal Ward Center to discuss his initial recruiting class in Boulder.

The class is expected to include between 16 and 21 players, depending on the number of signing day additions today. They will join the program as it enters the Pac-12 Conference next fall and will be the first class of student-athletes to spend their entire careers in the expanded league.

The class consists almost entirely of Embree recruits. The fact that Embree and his staff were able to cobble together a class of around 20 recruits in less than two months is as much a testament to the recruiting ability of the new coaches as it is an indictment of the lack of success the former staff was having before it was fired at the end of the 2010 season.

Embree initially estimated he would sign between 12 and 15 recruits when asked in mid-December, but the number of available scholarships grew after coaches learned at the semester break that several players would not return to the program next season for various reasons. Those players include wide receivers Kendrick Celestine and Andre Simmons, defensive lineman Dakota Poole and safety Terdema Ussery.

CU had 17 scholarships committed as of late Tuesday, including one for offensive lineman Alex Lewis who signed with the school last year, but delayed his enrollment until last month.

The larger class size also is a reflection of how Embree and his staff were received on the recruiting trail. Embree said he would only sign players he believes can help him win games and wouldn't simply use scholarships because they are available.

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Embree and his staff added two more recruits to the group Tuesday when defensive end Juda Parker, a 6-foot-2, 230-pound prospect from Hawaii, and Will Harlos (6-3, 200), a linebacker from Somerset, Texas, announced they would be attending Colorado. Harlos is a high school teammate of another Buff commitment, quarterback Stevie Dorman.

Parker was a big 11th-hour addition to a class that features no four or five-star players in rankings done by analysts at Scout.com and Rivals.com. However, Parker and offensive lineman Marc Mustoe of Arvada West High School are both considered high-level three-star players.

The class is slightly weighted toward defense with nine commits expected to at least begin their careers on that side of the ball. Six commits are offensive players and one is place-kicker Will Oliver from North Hollywood, Calif.

The program will learn today whether offensive lineman Paulay Asiata of Hawaii, running back Malcolm Creer of Pacific Palisades, Calif., wide receiver Devin Lucien of Encino, Calif., defensive lineman Marcus Martin of Los Angeles, offensive lineman/defensive end Stephan Nembot of Van Nuys, Calif., and linebacker Leilon Willingham from Mullen High School will opt for Boulder and four or five years in black, silver and gold.

The class also includes two quarterbacks who could be the face of the program in the near future. Transfer Brent Burnette was signed to provide some veteran competition to incumbent started Tyler Hansen. Dorman is the nephew of Ty and Koy Detmer. He was raised in a football family and could be in the competition for playing time sooner than most might expect.

The major recruiting sites don't think highly of the group based on the team rankings they produce. Scout.com had the CU class ranked No. 71 nationally and 11th in the Pac-12 ahead of only Arizona as of Tuesday evening.

Rivals.com ranked the Buffs' class 11th in the Pac-12 ahead of only Washington State and did not include CU in its list of top-50 classes.

Recruiting classes in transition years (years in which a coaching change is made) often are not well thought of by fans on signing day. The perception is always that the class would have been much better if the new coaches had a whole year to recruit.

That assumption seems to play out more often than not, but it doesn't mean a significant number of the players added to the program today won't become productive members of the team on fall Saturdays in the future.

The transition class signed in 2006 when former coach Dan Hawkins took over the program produced mixed results.

Tackle Nate Solder, a former two-star player in Scout.com ratings, became the star of the group earning consensus All-America honors as a senior and will likely be a high first-round draft pick in the NFL in April. However, he was recruited to CU by Gary Barnett's staff, not Hawkins' crew.

Eleven members of Hawkins' first CU recruiting class either failed to play at all in the program or left the school before completing their eligibility. Eight members of the class became regular contributors with players such as Solder, Jimmy Smith, B.J. Beatty, Jalil Brown, Marquez Herrod, Cha'pelle Brown, Justin Drescher and Cody Hawkins becoming integral parts of the team.

None of those players was rated higher than three stars by the recruiting services coming out of high school. By comparison, Hawkins signed eight players rated with four or five stars in the 2008 recruiting cycle and only a few of them have managed to make a significant contribution to the program to this point.

None of them have become stars at the college level. Perhaps that will change with different coaching and a fresh start in a new league.

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